


live with(out)

by annelesbonny



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, M/M, So much angst, all the hurt and none of the comfort, steve makes lists and i cry, steve rogers feat. sadness errands, these tags have gotten away from me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-04
Updated: 2014-07-04
Packaged: 2018-02-07 09:58:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1894791
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annelesbonny/pseuds/annelesbonny
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He wasn't supposed to wake up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	live with(out)

He wasn’t supposed to wake up. 

 

It’s his first thought and it’s bleak, as cold as the ice they chipped him out of and more unforgiving. The world is different, but so is he. Maybe he shouldn’t be, all he’s done is sleep, but maybe that’s the problem. He slept while the world moved on, time crawled forward without him and it’s been 70 years.

 

But it’s also been three days. Three days since a kiss and a train and a hand reaching for his and a chasm in his chest that won’t ever close. Then he’s putting a plane in the ocean and he’s thinking maybe this will all be worth it. Maybe it’ll all stop _hurting_.

 

He wakes up. He wakes up and he’s dreaming. Everything is muted, sound is muffled, and the tops of skyscrapers blur against a dull sky. The world is colored with a palette of bleeding grays that run like watercolor in the rain.He’s watching a picture he isn’t a part of anymore and they’ve changed the words to a song he’s known his whole life. 

 

He’s never felt old before. His hands used to be steady even as he washed flecks of bone and gore out of dark hair and off a face he knew better than his own, but now his fingers tremble to do up the buttons on his shirt. Getting up, getting dressed is exhausting in ways he doesn’t understand. Age hangs off of him like a heavy coat and there’s only so long he can keep his hands shoved in his pockets. 

 

SHIELD is surprisingly accommodating after their first disastrous attempt at reintroduction, They let him set the pace, reorienting himself to breathing, to walking, to living (?) in the ways that he can. Which isn’t to say that SHIELD doesn’t have their many, many hands in all in the aspects of his life. 

 

They watch him constantly. They run test after test. He lets them and in return, they let him run until he collapses and work out until his muscles are on fire. It’s worth it to sleep without the dreams, without the screaming. On a good night, he only hears himself scream, and his throat will hurt in the morning, but that’s okay. On the bad nights, it’s Bucky’s voice, breaking with fearand calling out for him, and he wakes violently, his hand reaching out desperately, uselessly. 

 

Doctors in white coats talk about shock and prolonged exposure and miracles. He doesn’t tell the kind woman in the beautiful head scarf that the very first thing he felt after they revived him was betrayal. That Nicholas Fury told him _this is the future_ and all he could think was _but why_? 

 

This is a test. 

 

They don’t let him out on his own for a long time. That’s probably good because he doesn’t know what he’d do, what he wouldn’t do, where he’d go, where he wouldn’t. All he does know is that none of this was supposed to be _without_.

 

(who)

 

(don’t ask)

 

(I won’t tell)

 

Turns out, he didn’t need to. History has preserved him (them) in sweeping murals and typed black letters, behind glass cases and in pixelated films. The colors are brighter than he remembered the war ever being. The color of his eyes aren’t quite right though. Bucky’s eyes were steel blue, calming like water and dark like a storm, a melody of grays and blues that could never be contained on paper. They tried though, and it would be a nice thought if it didn’t taste so bitter. 

 

He’s not allowed to sleep in the museum. It’s probably for the best. That’d be cheating, anyways, curling up under a picture of his dead friend like Bucky really is still watching over him like an exasperated, fond angel. But Steve stopped believing in things like angels because of winter and trains and _not without you_.

 

_Is_ this a test?

 

Reality sets in slowly and in pieces. There’s an apartment and maybe it’s too big, but he can learn to live with it. Four walls are four walls, after all. There’s a bed and maybe it’s too soft, but that’s better than dirty couch cushions on dusty floors and quiet, steady breathing next to him. 

 

(it is.

 

it _is_.)

 

He’s learning. 

 

It helps to make lists. Information is boundless, and he doesn’t think he’ll ever catch up. It’s something to do though, until aliens (!!) invade New York and the present comes rushing in all at once, with no thought for the past he’s still struggling to let go. He works with a team and maybe he likes it, leading again, but he wears it well and that’s what he hates. Hates them for awhile too, hates that they follow him, hates that he cares, hates that he died trying to end a war and woke up to find that it had all been wishful thinking. 

 

He makes more lists.

 

Learn to live with:

 

  * Water that always runs hot
  * The sound of the television in a too quiet apartment
  * A soft bed
  * Aliens
  * Starbucks
  * Bananas 



 

Learn to live without:

 

  * Bananas
  * That one shutter that used to creak constantly
  * Couch cushions on dusty floors
  * The sound of someone breathing next to him
  * Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, the 107th



 

(we’re going to the future)

 

**Author's Note:**

> Sort of inspired by the song You Learn to Live Without from the musical If/Then


End file.
